


To say, to know, to know the difference

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover elements, Family Dynamics, Gen, Slavery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6470440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There is a King, they say. A King with no heirs, a King risen from the tumult of war civil and magical, a King with magic in his hands and madness in his eyes and malice in his mind, they say.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <em>They say, but they do not know.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Erik moulds a crown from war, and the world is remade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> Written for the lovely Hester, based on the prompt "AOU Maximoffs in Westeros."
> 
> As you can see, I have gone a little off-mission.

_There is a King, they say. A King with no heirs, a King risen from the tumult of war civil and magical, a King with magic in his hands and madness in his eyes and malice in his mind, they say._

_They say, but they do not know._

* * *

 

Erik is born in a village of no consequence in the Stormlands, in the midst of a crackling, burning lightning storm that pains the sky white and lights the room where his mother screams him into the world in shadows as sharp as a sword. 

The hair on his father’s arms stands on end while Erik wails his first breath and the sky is torn apart by lightning so bright it seems purple and almost invisible.

Erik is good with lightning, later, but for now, he is small, and helpless, and the midwife says that this is a bad omen.

She says, but she does not know.

* * *

 

They say all kinds of things about the boy who can mould metal without heat, without tools, without a blacksmith’s strength. Erik is strong, yes, but it is the wirey strength of a boy not yet fifteen, loose and without direction. He has no training, has never stepped under the lintel of a forge, has never _needed_  to do so.

They say all kinds of things, and they do not know. 

Shaw knows, though. 

* * *

 

Shaw is from the Iron Islands. This, he tells Erik in a rare moment of honesty, while Erik sobs at the pains n his head, at the pains in his heart. 

Erik has called the lightning only once, on the day Shaw burned his village, and Shaw has tried to force him to do it again. He seeks to harness Erik’s gifts, to turn Erik into a source of power for himself, so that he might become something more than that which he is now.

 _Nothing._  That is what Shaw is, a bastard with a false name from a godsforsaken spit of land in the meanest of the Seven Kingdoms, powerless without fire to give him strength.

Fire, or lightning.

Erik knows that Shaw is nothing. He knows, but he does not say.

* * *

 

Magda is...

Magda sees him as something other than the metal and the lightning. She sees the burns on his arms, where he had tried to pull Mama from the flames, and the knotwork burned into his shoulder by Shaw’s precious ring. She sees the difficulty he has with smiling, and that his sleeplessness is an attempt to escape the night terrors that visit him so often.

She is the first to see him as a man, not a boy, not a weapon, and she is also the first to crown him, with a circle of woven daisies and forget-me-nots and buttercups, sitting in the long grass overlooking Cape Wrath.

Erik never forgets this, never forgets her, but he does move on. 

Shaw leaves him with no choice.

* * *

 

“Tell me, ser,” Erik says, standing over Shaw with something that might be a sword, given a hilt, turning like a spit by his side. “Do you feel _powerful_ now?”

Shaw’s remains are left for the wolves of the Northern forests to pick apart at their leisure. 

If the wolves know it was an execution, not a murder, they do not say, and it makes no difference to them regardless.

* * *

 

He finds Charles mostly by accident, scion of an ancient Naathi noble house and beautiful in the manner of their people, with his smooth face and bright golden eyes, innocent and harmless in a way that _infuriates_  Erik, even as he envies it.

“There can be no peace,” Erik tells Charles, “while those currently in power remain there.”

Charles purses his lips, frowns, and tips his head to the side as he does only when he is _listening,_ as only he can. 

“There is good in some of them yet,” he insists, and Erik throws his hands up in despair, because there is no shaking Charles’ idealism - it is as deeply rooted as his own cynicism, despite a wealth of evidence that it is _wrong._

Erik knows this, and says it, often and aloud.

* * *

 

_The Storm God rises in the Stormlands when Storm’s End falls to Aegon the False._

_He is terrible, and glorious, but most of all, he is powerful._

_They flock to his banners, and he reclaims Storm’s End with lightning as yellow as its walls._

_After that, he marches north._

* * *

 

Charles takes a sword to the back somewhere in the Riverlands, and somehow, he _survives._

“Elixir,” the golden boy says, hands tucked firmly under his arms now that he has taken them from Charles’ skin. “I had another name, before. I don’t need it now.”

“How marvellous,” Charles slurs cheerfully, poppy’s milk making him delirious. “I always said there were more of us!”

Erik has always known this, but denied it - he saw what happened, when one found another, and carries the scars on his skin and under it, and so he said nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

The boy who thinks he is a Targaryen lives yet, at Charles' insistence, and Erik wonders who else he will have to spare before this is all done.

Even Charles does not plead for the Lannister woman, although he does turn his face away when the sword falls on her pale neck. 

(She knew the whispers, and still sent that creature against Erik - a creature clad all in steel, held together by dark magic and iron bolts. It never stood a chance.)

The whispers... They spread like the wildfire seeded throughout the city, the wildfire that only the Banshee can hunt safely, with his echoing screams that find the pots without disturbing them. Soon, before anyone has even begun to listen to the Stormlanders in Erik's entourage, he and Charles are overrun with people, with  _children,_ who thought they were alone.

Charles looks on all of them, and does not say how he misses the sister he speaks of only when drunk. Erik knows, though.

 

* * *

 

 

It is the brothers who bring him the twins.

Scott and Alex, Summers for the Isles from whence they came, are tall and quiet and  _angry,_ flaring as bright as the red plumes that decorate their hair, flaring the perfect scarlet of the comet that burns overhead when they fight - loops and beams of light that tear through the armies of dead like it is nothing.

Somehow, in the midst of all the mess, they find the twins.

The girl looks like Magda, who Erik has always believed lost to him always, with her long dark hair and her soft eyes, her broad cheekbones and pointed chin, her thin fingers and bony elbows, even the uneven smattering of freckles across her cheeks. But the boy, despite the tangle of fair-and-dark hair and Magda's mouth, looks like  _him,_ has the jaw and the arrogance and the  _rage._

They are six years old, and already people fear them. Alex says this to Erik, quietly, as though hoping the twins do not hear, but Erik meets the girl's eyes - his  _daughter's_ eyes - and sees that she already knows.


	2. The Chase

Charles touches Erik for the first time after travelling with him for nearly three months.

It is innocent - the barest brush of his hand against Erik's broad, bare shoulder - but it is enough. 

Erik's mind boils over so furiously that Charles can hardly help but overhear it at the best of times, but even that not-quite caress fills Charles' mind with blistering scarlet and searing silver-grey. Skin on skin, Charles cannot find the seams between their minds, had almost been consumed by Erik's grief and rage and  _agony,_ and he does not dare to touch Erik again, not skin on skin.

Until-

 

 

* * *

 

 

It is cold. Many of their men share bedrolls, for warmth.

Erik's lips are thin and chapped and bitten raw, to the left on the bottom, but they are warm, and the fury and fear are a million miles away this time.

Charles has had lovers, male and female - he is beautiful, and charming, and not at all threatening, so of  _course_ he has had lovers - but none of them have ever been like Erik. None of them have ever had this same sparse muscle under scarred and ridged skin, hot and tightrope-taut under Charles' questing fingers. None of them have ever seemed so surprised by pleasure, so stunned when Charles shivered his way under the blankets and furs to put his pretty mouth to good use.

Erik holds him close, his hand under Charles' clothes, on the small of his back, and in the morning, his mind is quiet. 

It is cold again that night. Again, many men share bedrolls, for warmth.

Charles curls against the hard line of Erik's chest without a thought for warmth, thinking only of the even rush of Erik's heart and the steely calm of his mind when not overwhelmed.

They can win, if Erik's mind runs smooth, and this helps. Charles believes in Erik, believes that Erik has it in him to make something of the ruin these sunset kingdoms of his have become, and perhaps Charles loves Erik, too. Either way, the softness he can coax from Erik's hard body and harder heart when they are hidden away beneath the furs is an easy price to pay, for a chance at victory.

 

* * *

 

 

"Their mother was... Her name was Magda. She had dark hair, like Wanda's. And she smiled like Pietro."

Charles can see this woman Erik loved in his mind, laughing in sunlight with a crown of daisies and morning glory in her small hands, and the little girl the Summers brothers found is her very image.

"Were you married?" Charles asks, because that will decide how important these children really are to Erik, in political terms. Charles has done his time as a slave to masters who thought themselves great, and knows how legitimacy and bastardy are important to these pale-faced Westerosi. 

Erik's grin is sharp, a lethal thing shaded with blood by the fires behind Charles, and his eyes flash almost silver as the flames flicker.

"If I say we were wed," Erik says, "then we were wed. Who will question me?"

 

* * *

 

 

Wanda's hands burn bright, painful scarlet, her magic a thing living in and of itself, independent of her even though it is, so far as they can tell, under her control.

It scares some of their men - Joshua will not go near her, more afraid of her gifts even than he is of his own, and nervous little Kurt squeals in terror whenever the brown of Wanda's eyes fades to crimson. Even stoic Emma seems unnerved, and flashes sometimes as though she will become her invulnerable self when Wanda's god-destroying strength curls around her child's fingers.

Because Wanda is a child. It is easy to forget, when she is so calm, so quiet, so  _strong,_ but she is still only a little girl. She still likes to have a story read to her before she sleeps at night, still likes sweet things best to eat, and still likes to hold Erik's hand when he walks with her and Pietro around the camp, inspecting the fortifications and correcting sloppy work. 

"I have a child," Charles says one day, while he and Erik watch Wanda and Pietro and Kurt, who has forgotten his fears for a moment, play chasing. Oh, he and Erik are looking over the maps their scouts brought to them, of course they are, but it is difficult to concentrate on such things when the children are nearby, and so happy. "A son. His name is David."

Erik looks at him in something close to horror, and Charles understands that, more or less. Loss of family is Erik's deepest fear, the source of the rage that drives him on so powerfully, and since Charles has never, ever mentioned David, Erik must surely assume that Charles abandoned his son.

"He is hidden," Charles says, his voice even despite how difficult it is for him to speak of this. "The slavers discovered our kind years ago - that's how I ended up here, you know. I've seen so much of the world with the weight of a gilded collar around my neck."

Erik is quiet, but still horrified, so Charles forges on.

"David is... His mother was a free woman. A noblewoman, and a noble woman, too, I think, which is rare. She had made a habit of sending men to the cities of Slaver's Bay, where they spent huge amounts of her coin on- on people like me. On slaves. She bought me, and then she freed me right away. As soon as I arrived in Volantis, she had a man on the dock prepared to strike off our collars."

"What was her name?" Erik asks, a crown of daisies and morning glory foremost in his mind, and Charles matches it with a broken collar and a purse of golden coins. 

"Gabrielle," Charles says, wondering if she has ever forgiven him. "She- she did not know what I am. What I am capable of. I worked for her family, as a scribe and then as a teacher. I taught her to speak Ghiscari, and Naathi, and what Asshai'i I know. She showed me... Affection. I hadn't known such a thing since I was a child."

"How old were you when the slavers came?"

"Much the same you were, when Shaw came for you," Charles admits, ducking his head. "But I was cosseted, as much as a slave can be - I was too clever to be sent to mines or the fields, and too pretty to be sent to the kitchens or the stables, and too clever to be a bed slave. They trained me to teach."

And when the children under his tutelage had proven too stupid or too lazy to learn, Charles had taken the punishment, because Lord forbid that a  _free child_ be so useless as to be incapable of learning the rudiments of High Valyrian. No, much easier to blame the filthy Naathi slave teacher, whose golden eyes surely hold only lies. 

"But with Gabrielle, it was different," Charles says. "I taught her and her friends, and they paid me. I had enough money to rent a little room not far from the Waterfront, and I could buy my own food, and wear whatever clothes it pleased me to wear. It was... It was the easiest life I had ever known. It was  _good,_ Erik. I was free, and nothing else seemed to matter."

Blue little Kurt is joined by long-limbed and equally blue Hank, who is six-and-ten and the son of a fine old Riverlands House, but being blue and furred means that his proud kin want nothing to do with him. Charles likes him, though, likes his clever mind and his gentle heart, and still laughs to remember Erik's surprise when Hank, with his short twin swords, had wrought such terrible destruction during his first battle under Erik's scarlet-and-silver banner.

"She took you to her bed, though," Erik says. "That is more than just affection."

_I took you to my bed for something other than affection,_ Charles thinks, but he would never say it. Not to anyone.

"It was," he agrees instead. "I think I loved her, and I think that she was fond of me. She was a beautiful woman, and well loved in Volantis - she had her pick of any man she wanted. And she chose  _me_. Do you understand what that meant to me, Erik? To have someone want me, but not as a possession?"

Other slaves had sometimes found lovers within their ranks, but Charles had never dared. He had been roomed away from the house slaves in Yunkai, and the others in Astapor had mistrusted him for the unfettered access he was given to the family, and because he was allowed to speak before the master.

"It was good," he says, quietly. "But when Gabrielle told me that she was with child, I panicked. It was as though I were still collared - as if I, a slave, had gotten a bastard on the master's favourite daughter."

"And you fled," Erik guesses, disgust sharp in his voice. Charles can't even lift his head to look to Erik, knowing the loathing he will see in his lover's eyes. 

"No," Charles says, "I did something much worse. I found a woman who sold special remedies, and I procured one for Gabrielle, and asked her to kill our son before he was even born."

Charles has never quite forgiven himself for that - it seems a thing of no consequence here in the sunset lands, and was nothing to concern oneself with in Volantis, much less in the Bay, but in Naath, such a thing would be considered abhorrent. Years though he has spent doing what is necessary, but not always what is right, have hardened Charles somewhat, but the idea that he might never have known David? That is the worst thing in all the world.

"She said no," he says, still not looking up to Erik. "She laughed at me, and asked me to leave."

"And you did."

"No. No! No, I stayed - we fought over it, but I stayed. I thought that my whole family had been killed, Erik. David was... He was all I had in the world that was  _mine._ I would have fought the whole of Volantis to keep near to him."

David had been so small. Unusually small, the midwives had thought, and Gabrielle had despaired that this child she had fought him over would not survive in the world. Charles had not understood their fears at the time - he had held David and seen only the whole world, and its future. No fear, no worry, only joy. 

"He was three, the first time it happened," Charles says, remembering how Gabrielle had screamed and her father had raged, and Charles had stolen David up into his arms as his son screamed and clutched his little head with his little hands, begging his papa to stop the pain and the fighting.

Charles had never looked deep into David's mind, until that day. He still remembers the pain that had cut through his whole head when he tried to wade through the morass of different minds all held within his son's fragile little skull.

"He set the whole nursery alight. His nurse died - smothered by the smoke. I knew he had some of my talents, but his gifts are... They are legion, Erik. There is so much he can do, but he is only a little boy. Not much older than your Wanda and Pietro."

Pietro slips around the other children, the crowd of them having grown while Charles' head was bowed, a silver-blue ribbon of laughter that delights them all as much as Wanda's powers make them shake, and Charles aches to see David play chasing with Wanda and Pietro and Kurt, some day.

"He is hidden," Charles says. "With my sister. She escaped the slavers, thanks to her own gifts, and she keeps him safe. Raven is fiercer even than you, I think. She has a marvellous gift all of her own, and she uses it to protect David, because he is all there is left of our family."

David had cried when Charles left. He had clutched at Charles' legs and wept into Charles' robes, begging him,  _papa papa please don't leave,_ and Charles wonders how long it would take for a message to reach Raven, and for her to bring David here. 

"Raven keeps him safe," Charles says, "and keeps the world safe from him."

Erik catches him unawares, forcing him to meet his eyes, and Charles feels almost embarrassed. 

"I love my son," Charles says, "but I know that he is dangerous. I understand your worries for Wanda better than you think, Erik."

 

* * *

 

 

"It is easier to control when I don't think about it," Kurt says, lisping around his long eye teeth - Charles will not call them fangs - and smiling, a little shy. "If I think too hard, I end up going wrong. I don't know why."

Kurt's father is one of Erik's lieutenants, a red-skinned man who could be a devil from some Westerosi hell but who loves his son with a greater energy than most men turn to living. Charles respects Azazel, but is not so comfortable in his company as he is in Kurt's - something in Azazel's sternness reminds Charles of a man who once held a whip over him, and that cannot be ignored, even when he knows it for foolishness. 

"Then perhaps we could make a game of it," Charles suggests, taking Kurt's three-fingered hand and leading him out to the archery butts. There are only a few men there, this late in the evening, but Pietro and Wanda are there, with Erik, all three laughing. Erik seems years younger, when he is with the children, and Charles wonders if this weight in his chest is love. 

Part of him hopes that it is. It would make sense of so much of his life, since meeting Erik.

"If you ask Pietro nicely," Charles says to Kurt, who is bopping up and down on his bare toes, tail flickering like a candle flame. Whether he is nervous or excited, Charles cannot tell. "If you ask him nicely," he says again, "then he might play chasing with you, and you can use your gifts and he can use his, and I don't think that anyone could keep up with either one of you."

Kurt squeals with joy and disappears from Charles' side to appear at Pietro's. The two boys chatter at one another, and then there is a blur and a soft boom, and they are flashing all over the open field, whooping their joy.

Wanda seems to dwindle, in Erik's shadow, without her brother to shine a light on her, and Charles regrets stealing Pietro away from her, even for a moment.

 

* * *

 

 

The dead walk, and the Westerosi fight them as best they can.

Erik's armies can fight them better. They know this for a truth - Alex and Scott alone could do more harm than even the most determined battalion of Westerosi soldiers - but the nobles who lead the armies not under Erik's banner do not want to hear this.

It is young Aegon, who is maybe a dragon and maybe a pretender, who convinces the Westerosi of the right of things. Charles loathes the shackles Erik wrapped around the boy's wrists, hates that there is always a guard at his shoulder, but he recognises the massive concession Erik made to him, in keeping the boy alive.

"They want only peace," he says, handsome and sorrowful. "And they are good men. They will win this war. I am sure of it."

The Westerosi agree, reluctantly, from their half-dead-half-resurrected Lord Commander to the golden-handed Kingslayer and the towering Maid, but none of them utter another complaint after they see Erik's armies in battle.

Who could, when they render the Westerosis' precious dragonsteel swords useless simply by their presence?

 

* * *

 

 

More children find them every day.

A tiny slip of a girl about the twins' age appears in Charles' tent - mercifully after Erik has left, after Charles has rinsed the taste of Erik's seed from his mouth - in the first light of the thin dawn. She has hair redder than Erik's, skin paler than Wanda's, and eyes brighter than Pietro's, and Charles wonders when he began to compare people to the rising House of Lehnsherr upon first meetings.

_My name is Jean_ she says, whispering the words into the hollows behind his ears,  _and people say that you are like me._

_I am,_ he returns,  _and I know someone else who might be the same, too._

Wanda's light is all her own, when Charles introduces her to Jean. The two girls sit opposite one another, not moving, not speaking, but Charles laughs himself hoarse at the chatter springing between their minds, scarlet smoke and crimson fire, louder and giddier even than Pietro and Kurt are when they hit their stride. 

"You found her a friend," Erik says, bloodied brow pressed to the back of Charles' neck in the shadow of their tent the following night. "I- What am I to give you, in return for such a gift?"

"Wanda is a lovely girl," Charles says, pressing back into Erik's irrepressible warmth. It is silly of them, to be naked like this, even under their furs. It is too cold, for one thing, and the chance that Erik might be called to fight, or that Charles might be called to broker a peace between their men and the Westerosi men, well. It is impractical, but they do it anyhow. "She surely has plenty of friends among the children."

"They are all frightened of her," Erik disagrees, mouth moving against the crest of Charles' spine. "But this new girl, Jean of the Grey Eyes, she is just as powerful as Wanda, I think, if in a different way. They are too afraid of themselves to be afraid of one another. Thank you, for bringing them together."

 

* * *

 

 

The first time a child dies-

Children die all the time. Charles knows this - he saw it, again and again, children trampled underfoot during raids on Naath, children beaten to death for spilling wine on their new mistress' fine gown, children pushed down twisting staircases just to amuse the free children of their household. He has seen a thousand children die a thousand deaths, but this is different.

The men not of Erik's armies call Charles the  _Nursemaid,_ when they think he cannot hear them, because he is always surrounded by the children. The children themselves call him  _Teacher,_ nothing more, and that is the name Charles likes best. 

But the others, they call him the Nursemaid, and it is true that he has taken the care of the children on himself - he is one of Erik's primary advisors, but he is no warlord, no tactician, and while he will take up arms in defence of himself and his own, against Naathi teachings but in line with the practical experience learned as a slave, he will not take to the field. 

So he remains behind, and he keeps the children close, and he helps them learn their powers. It is difficult, because some of them are afraid to learn, or afraid of the others learning, or even of their powers and gifts, but he persists, and he thinks that he has helped all of them, at least a little.

(Before him, Sean could not fly. Before him, Hank was ashamed. Before him, Scott and Alex feared themselves for the harm they could do, had done. Things are different, because of him.)

He did not know this child. He was not one of theirs, had never spent time walking the camp with Charles when he could not sleep, had never fought in play against the other children.

Charles learns that his name was John, that he had fire in his fingers and madness in his heart, and that he ran out to face the monsters crawling from the far north because someone told him that they were only made of ice.

Charles vows that not a single other child will die in this war, not if he can help it.

 

* * *

 

 

A magnificent blizzard blows up in the middle of a battle, and in it spins a tornado.

It tears the dead to shreds, leaving only their ice-and-malice masters to be dealt with, and Charles' heart leaps to his mouth when the tornado clears to reveal a child, a child with skin as dark as his own but white, white hair and white, white eyes.

"My name is Ororo," she says when she has touched down to the snow before him, her voice startlingly deep and her smile like a sunrise. "I hear that you do not scorn the likes of us."

The children are all afraid of her, save for the twins and Jean and Kurt, who has outgrown all of his fears since forging a friendship with Pietro. Ororo sits with them at evening, by the fires, and Charles wonders how they might look with one more added to their number, a beautiful boy with Charles' own bright golden eyes but his mother's glossy black raven's-wing curls.

"You will have him with you again soon, love," Erik murmurs, too quiet for anyone to overhear them. "I will make sure of it."

 

* * *

 

 

Charles has seen all kinds of miracles, has been considered a miracle himself, but nothing in all his life could have prepared him for this.

"Lord of Harmony preserve us," he breathes, tugging the girls closer to him, feeling Pietro and Kurt press in tight to his back. "I didn't think the rumours were true."

Dragons fill the skies above them, screeching a war cry such as even Erik could not match, and the whole world seems to burn.

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere, in the midst of it all-

_Protect my children,_ Erik's mind burns against Charles, branding him with fury and bloodlust and love, that above all.  _Wanda will make a fine Queen._

Charles cannot but cry out at that, one hand stretched to the distant battle and the other clutching his head, and the children - not just the twins and their friends, but  _all_ of the children - crowd around him in concern, in terror. If Teacher is fallen, if Teacher is afraid, then how are they to go on?

Charles straightens, and gathers himself, and forces a smile. Best they don't know that all may be lost, and with it, Charles' heart.

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere, in the aftermath-

"She knew that she would not survive it," Erik says. "She was... What was it you said of Gabrielle? A noblewoman, and a noble woman."

Daenerys Targaryen, a Queen such as Charles' has only heard of in stories, gave herself and her dragons for the world. Her only heir, the boy who would be Aegon the Sixth, perished in felling a monster, and in doing so allowed for the bastard Lord Commander on his dragon to slay the Other King.

The world stands still, in mourning, for a morning.

And then it must go on.

 

* * *

 

 

The realm is without a King. That is all anyone wishes to speak about.

It is without a capital, too, since even Sean's careful probing was not enough to save King's Landing from the wildfire in the end, and with King's Landing went the Iron Throne.

The same people who hailed Erik as the Storm God, for the bright lightning that he can draw from nothing, now hail him as the Storm King, and the children and all their other brothers-and-sisters-in-arms take up the cry.

"Erik, of House Lehnsherr, King of the Seven Kingdoms," Charles says, leaning up just enough to brush a kiss over Erik's thin mouth before he must unleash him on the whole of Westeros. "It has a ring."

 

* * *

 

 

Civil war beckons, somehow, in the wake of a war for survival, because these Westerosi are so obsessed with bloodlines over merit, and Charles is not at all surprised. Violence has only ever begotten more violence, after all, and Erik has a reputation for being a very violent man indeed.

 


	3. The Age of Miracles

King's Landing, they called their city, where once upon a time a man who wished to claim that which was not his began his theft.

Storm's End is a thousand times the city King's Landing could ever have been, Wanda thinks, as she flies above it with David and Ororo and Jean around her. Somewhere far below, Pietro and Kurt are racing one another through the streets, doubtless laughing as they startle and spook the women tending their market stalls and the men pulling their carts to the square.

The city is golden by dawn, the vast yellow sandstone walls of the castle reflecting bright and blooming onto the streets below, and Wanda flies toward the red-bronze sun peeping above the soft horizon with her friends around her, and wonders if ever the sea god and the goddess of the wind look to Storm's End and crow with joy, to see it held by someone other than Durran Godsgrief's heirs.

"The weather is trying to turn," Ororo warns her, the myriad narrow braids of her pale hair coiling like a snowstorm around her smooth shoulders. Ororo likes to dress in the Dornish fashion, or some approximation of it, in smooth silks and soft chiffons that rise and roll around her like the winds she holds in her hands, and Wanda is sometimes jealous of how beautiful, how _striking_ Ororo is. Everyone notices the moment Ororo walks into a room, and every man and boy around court wishes for a chance to win her hand and heart, because yes, she is terrifying, she is so powerful that she cannot but be terrifying, but she is also _wondrous._

Ororo's weather-warnings are always to be taken seriously, but Wanda has plans for today, and she will not see them ruined just because of shadowing skies and whispering winds. She has flown in worse than this, flown with Ororo in her whirlwinds, and fears nothing the sky might throw at her.

If all else fails, and she falls, Pietro will catch her and run her to safety. He always does.

"We continue on," Wanda says firmly, dipping lower all the same - at least if she is closer to the ground when Ororo's bad weather breaks, it will be easier to find safety. "We are almost there already, after all."

David sometimes... Hears things.

Things that aren't there to be heard.

Wanda hears the echoes through the red-gold thread that holds them together, forged by accident while she and Charles fought the demons in David's mind, and she helps him decipher the meaning of these things, helps him decide whether they are real or fake or somewhere in between, which is most often the case.

"It came from here," David says, held aloft by the gifts one of the demons had tried to withhold from him, before Wanda slew it. He is beautiful, sometimes, in ways that surprise Wanda. Here, lit up from behind by the not-quite risen sun, his eyes bright and shockingly green, he is glorious, and Wanda wonders if this is how it feels for Papa, to look at Charles and have his heart seize in his chest, as hers sometimes does when David surprises her. "This little... Village, or whatever it is."

David grew up in the great city of Volantis, or at least spent enough time there that he and the demons in his mind know what a true city _is,_ and then bounced from village to village and town to town around the Reach, under the care of his aunt, until Charles brought them to join Papa's court. The village below them is so small that it is hardly a village at all, really, just a clutch of houses gathered around a sept and a pump.

But Wanda knows it, from the echoes of David's whispers. She recognises that polished doorstep and that new patch of thatched roof, and the dance of the morning glories in the grass around the pump. It reminds her of the tiny village where she and Pietro were born, or the tiny village where she and Pietro and Papa and Charles found David and Raven, or the tiny villages where they are finding more and more children with gifts like theirs.

No, not quite like theirs. There are few children who are like Wanda, or David, or Ororo, or Jean. Some as powerful as Pietro or Kurt, as Alex or Scott or Sean, yes, they exist and are glorious all on their own, but not so many like Wanda and her friends. Perhaps it is best that way.

"The house furthest from the sept," Wanda says, sending the same along the perfect spun silver of her bond with Pietro's mind. He will relay the information to Kurt, and they will all come to the same point at the same time, more or less. They have practised it so many times that it is a reflex by now, like the automatic motion of Papa's wrist that spins the wheels of Charles' chair when they go for their morning walks in the gardens, or the easy way Alex curls around his chest plate whenever someone steps too close.

Only Darwin ever steps too close to Alex without fear and uncertainty, which makes Wanda sad. Alex's heart burns as red as his fire, running over with a fierce sort of love that she has only really seen matched by Papa, and by Pietro, and she wishes that more people knew of it.

The house furthest from the sept is neatly kept, Wanda sees when she lands, with a beautiful ironwork trellis around the polished, studded door. There is ironwork on the windowframes, too, and heavy iron columns supporting the little overhang of the slated roof, and the neat little fence marking out where this family's holding ends and the next begins is a twisting run of iron that makes Wanda's mind itch, reaching for something just beyond her fingertips.

"I see it too," David tells her, alighting at her side and seeming more human, less achingly beautiful, with his eyes their usual bright gold against the brown of his skin, with his hair flopping soft and dark over his brow. "It's familiar, and I don't know why."

Ororo and Jean touch down just as Pietro and Kurt make their smiling appearance, and in the sudden absence of the thrum of all their gifts in the back of Wanda's mind, she feels as though she, too, is running over with love, most of it for these five who are her constant companions.

"The ironwork isn't forged," Jean says, curious, and reaches out a hand to touch the little fence.

The fence, in turn, reaches out to touch her back.

The girl who made the fence move has hair the colour of fresh spring grass, soft and thick and curling just a little as it ripples like stormclouds over her shoulders.

Her name is Lorna, and she has Papa's eyes of steel.

She knows who they are, of course, knows them by the names the smallfolk have given them - Storm, Phoenix, Nightcrawler - and eyes Wanda and Pietro and David with special suspicion, when they are introduced. Pietro's silver hair and too-blue eyes make some uncomfortable, are too close to stories of White Walkers since vanquished, and Wanda is... Well, she is Wanda. She is their father's chosen and anointed heir, made a legend by the efficiency with which she quashed the rebellion that rose in support of the Lannister bastard.

Not all legends are bedtime stories, though, and Wanda has long since made her peace with inspiring more nightmares than daydreams.

David... Well, the highborn lords and ladies who flock to Papa's court and try to oust him and his by secret means loathe Charles, for being Papa's consort in all but name when their societal mores would have him pretend that they are nothing but friends outside of the bedchamber, and for knowing of their secret means before they can put them into action. David is known to have all of Charles' skill and talent in that direction as well as a hundred more, and, of course, he is Wanda's consort, or near as makes no difference.

No one likes that. They all feel that Wanda ought to submit herself to some of their sons, and let Pietro rule with one of their daughters as his Queen, if they cannot oust the House of Lehnsherr. Papa had laughed at the last one to suggest a different match for Wanda - an old man from the Vale, in curious armour that seemed to spark in David's vision - and that seems to have stopped their suggestions, at least for now.

She is pleased at the thought of David as her consort, imagining his lovely face crowned by a circlet of silver and rubies.

Lorna's face is lovely too, all planes and angles and suspicion, and it is easy to imagine her in a gown of white satin, with a coronet of silver and iron holding all her magnificent hair back from her steely eyes.

"You are the Storm King's get," she says, her words sharper than Wanda might have expected from a girl raised among the smallfolk. "The Witch, and Quicksilver. I've heard the tales."

She watches them, first Wanda and then Pietro, and then turns her fierce gaze on David, silver eyes on gold, and _stares._ Wanda can feel more of David's discomfort than she can of Lorna's apparent... Amusement?

Wanda senses the coils of iron almost too late - Jean sears those nearest her, Ororo tears them into the sky, Pietro and Kurt disappear from near them, and David-

David lets the narrow beam twist around his wrist, never looking away from Lorna's eyes, and then he smiles, just as Wanda blinks and the iron is gone.

"So," David says. "You inherited your father's gifts. I wonder how he will react to this."

A jolt of horror echoes down the thread from Pietro's mind into Wanda's, and she laughs - Papa will be furious, if only because he holds family more precious than all else, and will hate that any part of his family was kept from him.

"Tell me, little sister," she says, drawing Lorna's gaze and smiling. "Do you fly?"

_Little sister,_ Wanda thinks, turning the words over in her mind, in the corner reserved for David's thread. _It will be strange, getting used to it._

Wanda has always had _little brother_ \- only by moments, true, but a difference they have each held important all the same - and has never had to become used to anything else. Mama married Magnus before they were even born, but never had another child, and then Magnus had died, and she had not married again.

No one is allowed to speak of Magnus, because if Magnus was Mama's husband, then Papa cannot have been, and if Papa was not Mama's husband, then Wanda and Pietro are bastards and Papa has no heirs.

So, Magnus never was. There was only Mama, and Papa, and in the secret corners of her mind which Wanda shares only with Pietro and David and Jean and sometimes Charles, there is Magnus, hidden away for his safety and the safety of the whole of Westeros.

Because the realm cannot afford another war.

Lorna's existence will only drag up the old whispers of bastardy - but Wanda finds that she does not mind. She has fought more difficult wars than the battle over her right to ascend the throne in Papa's wake, after all, and one more fight is a small price to pay for the laughing silver-green of Lorna's presence on the edge of her mind.

Silver-green for Lorna and silver-blue for Pietro and silver-shining-red for Papa, but no silver at all for Wanda, and she tries not to consider it one more way in which she stands apart from her family.

"You constantly surprise us all, Wanda," Charles says, settling beside her as Papa exclaims over Lorna. Wanda has done her duty, has reunited her sister with their father, has found out the source of David's strange dreams, has halted another potential rebellion before it can even be dreamt, and so she steps back, into shadows and the comfort of the court brought by her absence.

Charles does not often allow her to withdraw completely, seems to find it offensive that she feels the need to do so. He coaxes her back into Pietro's light, back into her rightful place at the centre of things, and is the only one who notices when she steps back.

"Here we thought you chasing amusement this morning," Charles says, "but you were chasing a fear of rebellion, weren't you?"

Charles understands such things better than Papa, who sees justified terrors and threats, but not those yet unrealised. How could he see such a thing, when he can only see the tangible? How could he understand how dangerous it is for him to hold dominion with the support of the smallfolk, but not with the support of the nobles?

“If we control how people hear of Lorna’s existence,” Wanda says, “we can control how they perceive this news. Don’t you think?”

 

* * *

 

The armour of the Kingsguard is black, chased with gold - a direct and purposeful contrast to the white of the old rule, and, accidentally or otherwise, a mirror of the colours of House Baratheon, whose holdings are now those of the House of Lehnsherr.

Whose holdings are now _submissive_ to the House of Lehnsherr, for fear of Papa’s wrath, and of Wanda’s.

“It contrasts so nicely against Pietro’s hair, don’t you think?” Ororo whispers, sitting to Wanda’s right. David is to her left, as always, wearing a beautiful ring with a gently pulsing red gem set in gold almost as bright as his eyes. He is dressed in subtle, muted colours, mostly black with a slight hint of rich, deep blue, the colours Charles adopted as belonging to House Xavier, the name he carried with him all the way from Naath, through slave markets and war. They suit him better than they do David, Wanda thinks, but then - she has always preferred David in red, _her_ red, edged with silver to contrast with his golden hair and skin and eyes.

“I think it suits Kurt just as well,” Wanda whispers in return, reaching out without looking for David’s hand, knowing that he will find her touch. In truth, Kurt does look singularly fine, slight and svelte in slim-fitting scale armour, a narrow helm different from Pietro’s winged helmet but just as lovely. “They have earned this reward a hundred times over-”

“And it leaves you less contested as your father’s heir,” David murmurs, squeezing her fingers. “It is a neat solution to many problems.”

Papa and Charles get away with their relationship only because they are so feared - there is not a man or woman in the Stormlands, in the whole _realm,_ who does not tremble at the thought of Papa’s rage, or of Charles’ more subtle, more deadly dangers. Pietro and Kurt are dangerous, of course they are, but they are also the smiling, shining lights of Papa’s court, using their gifts for teasing and japery as often as for combat. People forget, and in that forgetting, they lose their fear.

Pietro and Kurt would not enjoy the sufferance given to Papa and Charles, were they to become open about their relationship. By positioning them both in the Kingsguard, Papa has given them as much freedom as he can to spend their lives together, and removed Pietro as an opponent to Wanda, when the time comes for her to take the throne.

“Many people seem to be thinking the same,” Jean said, sitting with one foot tucked under herself on David’s far side. “It is well done, I think. Now we have only one more obstacle to keep from your path.”

Lorna, sitting by Papa’s side, is radiant. The polished steel of the little circlet Papa wove for her shines bright against her striking hair, and the dark iron grey of her robes is lovely against her sun-browned skin. She has Papa’s square jaw and the fine, tight curl of his hair, his pale eyes and stern brow. She has his talents, and his severe manner, and half a dozen tiny mannerisms of his that must be inherited, for they surely could not have been learned.

What has Wanda of her father’s? By rights, not even his name.

“One more tricky obstacle,” Ororo agrees, light as a zephyr. “I wonder if my coming guest might be able to offer us some help.”

Ororo has been uncharacteristically reticent as to the identity of this guest of hers, but Wanda supposes that they all must have their secrets - hers, after all, could ruin them, so she cannot begrudge anything to the others.

“I welcome any help at all in this quandry,” Wanda says, refusing to meet Charles’ knowing golden gaze - has he heard her doubts? Her fears? “But not today - today is for Pietro, and for Kurt.”

 

* * *

 

When Wanda introduced Lorna to their father, it was simple.

Papa accepted Lorna as his own in a heartbeat, like knowing like instantaneously. Hailed her as his daughter, praised her as his child.

_Recognised_ her.

He sought to give her his name, before Charles - coin-bright eyes catching on Wanda’s - stopped him.

If Lorna Dane becomes Lorna Lehnsherr, who will have a care for Wanda? Lorna has Papa’s gifts, after all.

Lorna has never razed an army in the field with a clenched fist.

People have short memories for wonders - Lorna’s wonders are ever-present, easily produced, just as Papa’s are.

People have a long memory for horror, though, and Wanda’s gifts so easily turn that way.

 

* * *

 

“I would see you and your sister grow as close as you are to your friends,” Papa says, as they walk in the gardens. It is a beautiful day - Ororo made certain of that, for her mysterious visitor arrived three days ago, T’Challa of the Wakandan Penninsula in the Summer Isles, who has been writing to Ororo for years, since first they met in the market port at Gulltown in the Vale, and who would make Ororo his queen - and they are left alone, thanks to Jean, who has fewer compunctions about nudging people to different paths than Charles. “I know she cannot understand what you have seen and suffered as they do, but-”

“How can I become close to her when half the realm thinks she ought to be your heir in my place?” Wanda asks, as evenly as she can. “How can I become close to her when it seems that _you_ might see her as your heir, with this betrothal?”

Papa’s face is closed off then, as implacable as the great iron barriers he drew up to cover the gaps in Storm’s End’s walls. Wanda knows that she is right to fear, because Papa only tries to hide himself from her like this when he is in the wrong.

“People fear you, Wanda,” he says. “They are pleased by Lorna, and while that might fit in times of peace, it will not do in times of war. We must have peace-”

“And so you would cast me down and raise Lorna in my place?” she demands. "You, who insists so often that we already  _have_ peace?"

_“No,”_ Papa says, fierce as he was in his youth, when she was a child on the battlefield and he was a monster and a hero all at once. “No, child, never - have I given you so much cause to doubt me, Wanda? Have I ever given you reason to believe that I value you any less than I do your brother? No, I have not - so why should I value you less than your sister?”

“Then why betroth Lorna to the last son of the House of Stark?” Wanda demands. She knows well enough what they say of Brandon the Broken, that he is gifted in strange ways, just as she and her friends are - warg, skinchanger, witch-king, sitting in the faraway North, a ruined man in a ruined castle.

He is the most powerful man in Westeros, aside from Papa, and Papa seeks to make him Lorna’s husband. How is Wanda to take that as anything other than a threat?

“Lorna will go North, and help this Brandon the Builder with his building,” Papa says, stopping and setting his hands on Wanda’s shoulders. “And you will be here, the Witch Queen allying with the Northern Witch King, and together, you and David will make peace, with your sister and her husband. Do you see, Wanda? I do not seek to make her your rival. I seek to make her your right hand.”

"What of our peace?" she asks, diminished and leaning on David's thread in the back of her mind. "What of  _your_ peace?"

"Peace was never an option for me, little one," he sighs, brushing her hair back with gentle hands. "But you and Lorna together might forge it, in my memory. Do you see the difference, child?"

She does, and she hates it.


End file.
